Is Red Pill Biblical?

In 2015, a popular Red Pill Blogger named Rollo Tomassi agreed with some traditionalist Christians that “Christianity was already Red Pill before there was a Red Pill”. “Red Pill” refers to a collection of theories of how human intersexual dynamics work. The Red Pill theory has been spreading across the internet for almost two decades. The phrase “The Red Pill”, as it is used in the Manosphere, is based upon the 1999 sci-fi movie “The Matrix” starring Keanu Reeves. In this film’s dystopian future, all of humanity has been enslaved by machines in a simulated reality known as “The Matrix” by an artificial intelligence that mankind had created long ago.

In the movie a character named Morpheus offers Neo, the movie’s main protagonist, a choice between a blue pill and a red pill in the famous quote below:

“This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill—the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill—you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.”

This Red Pill/Blue Pill paradigm was adopted by the manosphere over the past two decades to compare and contrast two different collections of theories of how human civilization should be conducted.

Even though I will be quoting from Tomassi’s blog during this series to compare and contrast Red Pill with the Bible, I want to make clear from Tomassi’s own words that he is not the inventor of Red Pill theory.

In his article entitled “The Purple Pill” , Tomassi, wrote this about the origins of the Red Pill:

“While I am humbled to be accounted as one of the Red Pill’s prominent writers I will never lay claim to having created it. The Red Pill in its truest sense belongs to the collective that has contributed to it as a whole. It belongs to the men who’ve fostered it, who’ve risked their livelihoods and families apart from it to make other men aware; it belongs to those who understand that its objectivity is what’s kept it open and honest, discussable and debatable.”

Rollo Tomassi began studying psychology and behaviorism in 2001. His emphasis was on behaviorism and specifically behaviorism as it relates to how the human genders think and act.

He began by taking his gender centered behaviorism theories to an online forum called https://www.sosuave.com/ where he debated and discussed them with others to refine his theories.

10 years after starting his journey, in 2011, he started TheRationalMale.com blog. His blog was an instant success becoming one of the most popular blogs in the Manosphere. In 2013, he published his book “The Rational Male” which was essentially an edited version of his first year’s blog posts along with many questions he had from commenters and his answers to them.

This then leads us to the most important question Christians must answer about Red Pill.

Do the doctrines of the Bible, upon which Christianity was founded, agree with any part of Red Pill theory?

The answer to this question can be found in the following two statements by Tomassi.

“I’ve been watching Outlaw King on Netflix recently. There’s a part where the wife of Robert the Bruce says ‘Power is making decisions, and whatever course you are charting, I choose you, my husband’ It struck me that my own wife had said almost these same words to me in 2005. When I’d decided to take a job in Orlando that would uproot us from family and friends. There was no “,…but what about my friends, career, etc.?” from her and I had no hesitation to consider anything but taking the position. She said, “You are my husband, I go where you go.”

How many men hold a default Frame in their marriage? Many women are reluctant to even accept their husband’s last name today. There’s a lot of bullshit reasons for this, but the core truth is that women have no confidence in their man in the long term. They don’t trust his ‘course’. There’s holding Frame, and then there’s establishing a long term Frame, a paradigm, a reality of his own, that defines a man’s authority in his marriage and family relationships. Women today still want marriage, but few want to defer to their husband’s ‘course’. They don’t trust him with her life.”

“There are numerous ways a feminine-primary social order removes the teeth from male authority today. First and foremost is the social pretense of blank-slate equalism. A default presumption that men and women are coequal agents in every aspect – physical, emotional, psychological, intellectual – is the cover story necessary to remove an authority that was based on the conventional differences between the sexes. To the blank-slate equalist gender is a social construct, but gender is only the starting point for a social constructionist belief set. Social constructionism is a necessary foundation upon which blank-slate equalism is built, but ultimately it’s a means of control. By denying each sex its innate differences social constructionism denies men their innate advantages and strengths. Once this became the normalized social convention it was a simple step to remove male authority…

The authority men used to claim innate legitimacy of in the past is now only legitimate when a woman wields it. Men need to retake this authority and own it as is their birthright once again.”

The sentiment that Tomassi has just stated, that a man’s authority over his wife and his children is his “birthright” and that a wife should trust her husband with the course he has plotted for them and with her very life is 100% Biblical.

The Bible agrees with Red Pill that male authority over woman is indeed the birth right of every man. In 1 Corinthians 11:3 we read “the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man” and in 1 Timothy 2:12 the Bible states that women are forbidden to “to usurp authority over the man”. In Ephesians 5:23 we read “For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church”.

I also want to return to Tomassi’s first comment about women in our modern era having no trust or confidence in their husbands. The Bible speaks to this trust women are called to:

“5 For after this manner in the old time the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands: 6 Even as Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose daughters ye are, as long as ye do well, and are not afraid with any amazement.”

I Peter 3:5-6 (KJV)

The Bible calls on women to obey and be in subjection to their husbands because they trust God and his design of male headship over women. In other words, women should trust their husbands ‘course’, to use Tomassi’s language, because they trust that God has given their husbands the ‘course’ he wishes them to follow.

So, the answer to the question of “Do the doctrines of the Bible, upon which Christianity was founded, agree with any part of Red Pill theory?” is a resounding YES!

But just because the Bible would be Red Pill in some areas does not mean it is Red Pill in all areas.

And this is what I will be exploring in this new series “Is Red Pill Biblical?” There are a lot of different aspects of Red Pill to cover and I want to break them down into bite sized pieces so that Christians can fully understand the Red Pill Theory and where Red Pill is in agreement with a Biblical world view and where Red Pill is in conflict with a Biblical world view.

4 thoughts on “Is Red Pill Biblical?”

Because our culture has moved so far away from the biblical model of male headship over the wife and his family, it seems to me that a part of every courtship process needs to include a deep and thorough discussion and analysis of the Bible’s position on this matter.

Over time the influence of the Feminist movement has a way of creeping into women’s minds and rallying support for it. I’m convinced it is an “appeal to the flesh” kind of thing. Because of this every newly wed couple would be well advised to revisit this issue specifically, from time to time, in the journey of their marriage to reinforce their agreement with God’s Word on this matter. I know my wife and I do this, thanks in part to your writings… Our marriage is super strong because of it! We have been married 48 years and going strong…

We know our culture isn’t going to give up on the Feminist movement any time soon, no matter how much the Red Pill approach is discussed. It takes a long time for cultural issues like this to be resolved and returned to sane standards of belief, so being proactive is like the old adage “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure…”

This is just the tip of the iceberg. I have a large stack of quotes I have acquired from studying Rollo’s Rational Male site that I will be using in this series on Red Pill. I will of course being doing some non-Red Pill articles as well in between. Back in 2015 when I first wrote on him I had only read a few of his articles and knew little about him. Since then I have learned a lot more plus spoken online and via email to many Red Pill folks to get a better perspective.